Final Jeopardy

CHAPTER 2

Manhattan ’s Criminal Courts Building is a massive, ugly, gray structure, the facade of which unconsciously reflects the rumor – not true that it was built during the Depression as a WPA effort. The usual maxims about the search for truth and justice are chiseled into its exterior columns and above its entrances which stretch the length of several city blocks. But its even more grim interior houses the cramped work cubbyholes of the thousands of worker bees who do the everyday business of the criminal justice system: judges, assistant district attorneys, Legal Aid Society lawyers, and probation officers. The northern end of the complex – the only piece of it to have been remodeled in more than half a century is named the Tombs, the cells in which prisoners are held before arraignment or during trials, connected to the courthouse by the Bridge of Sighs.

Mike liked to call the prison Landin Lounge, after the federal judge who ordered it rebuilt because of the overcrowded conditions that had prompted riots and lawsuits a decade ago.

“Yeah, build those scumbags a first-class joint.

Give ‘em private rooms and color tubes and a gym so they can pump themselves up so they can run faster next time I’m chasing ’em. After all, they’re killing each other to get in there, might as well make it comfy for them. Oh, and showers, six showers on every cellblock.

Remember Devon Cranston? The homeless guy who lived in Riverside Park and stabbed four people to death? How often did he shower in Riverside Park? You bet your ass he showers twice a day now in Landin Lounge. Meantime, he was fond of saying, ‘if I put my sandwich down on your desk for a minute, forty-three roaches swarm out of your filing cabinets and devour it. There’s asbestos leaking out of your water fountain and lead paint chips falling off the ceiling into Battaglia’s coffee cup. But start with the prisoners first.

That’s a judge who’s really got his priorities straight.“

Despite my tenure in the office and my administrative position, the room in which I work is no fancier or larger than that of any of my colleagues. It’s a cubicle about eight by fourteen feet with a single window that faces another dreary government building across the narrow side street.

My efforts to cheer it up with photographs and prints are outweighed by the drab collection of battered pieces of furniture: a desk, several unmatched leather chairs, one bookcase, and an array of tall five-drawer file cabinets which like most city-issued supplies, including a very worn strip of stained carpeting are a dull shade of gray.

Today, like most other days, there is additional clutter which includes exhibits from complex investigations and completed trials. They document the violent landscape of the city over which my colleagues and I have jurisdiction: maps and charts of rooftops, parks, housing project stairwells, and elegant apartment interiors waiting to be marked as evidence at trial or shipped to the archives in the basement of the cavernous courthouse for storage until all the defendants’ appeals in each of the cases are exhausted.

The top of my metal desk is covered with a bright red blotter, rarely more than a sliver of which is visible because of the accumulation of manila folders and white legal pads that pi leon top. They house case files and witness interviews, police reports and memoranda from unit prosecutors, laboratory analyses of body fluids and blood types, mug shots of suspects being sought, medical records and DNA profiles of rape survivors, and every other form of detritus of the world of criminal law.

I walked from my office down the hallway to the conference room to fill the pot for the first round of coffee, while Mike double-checked to confirm that Piggy was still in the nuthouse at Bellevue.

“That would have been much too easy,” he said, ‘so let’s figure out where to go from there.“

“Battaglia wants us to review every pending sex offense complaint, all of my closed cases that resulted in serious time, and the lists of guys released to parole recently. My paralegals will help you put that stuff together when they get in the files are all in their office, down the hall near the Appeals Bureau.”

“You’ve got to think for me, Alex. Things that aren’t in case files, things nobody else could know about, remarks that you’ve ignored because you’ve been in the business too long to pay attention to them. Hang-up calls, letters from cranks, goofballs, malcontents.”

“I’ve been thinking about it all night, Mike. Most of the guys you and I encounter are much too stupid to plan something like yesterday’s murder. I’m sure this is going to tie in to something that Isabella did to someone, really.”

“Well, Coop, we still have to go through the motions, so start combing your file folders for ideas. Jesus, your desk looks like the bottom of a birdcage! I want you to go through every piece of paper that’s current, and clean up that mess while you’re at it.”

I gave Mike the key to the office shared by my two paralegals, where all the unit records were stored, so he could get a jump on the older cases and parole notifications while I thought about how to begin to examine the jumble of papers on my desk.

I picked up the phone, accessed an outside line, and dialed the number for the Ritz, the elegant old hotel Jed favored when he was doing business in Paris.

“Non, madame, Monsieur Segal is not in at the moment. Yes, madame, of course I will leave him another message.

Au revoir, Madame Cooper.“ It was midday in Paris. Jed was probably sitting in some outdoor cafe sipping a good Bordeaux with a client, and unlikely to pick up my messages until he returned to his room at the end of the evening.

During the next two hours, I managed to fill several pages of a white legal pad with some obvious candidates for consideration. There were plenty of active investigations to look at – the drama coach who subjected students to sexual abuse, the drug importer who sedated and videotaped models as he raped them, and the gay art dealer who played sadomasochistic games with young men he picked up in leather bars; and there were literally thousands of closed cases serial rapists, pedophiles, and professionals who didn’t look the part of sexual deviants.

For once I was delighted when the hour approached 9 A.M. and the corridors began to come alive with the courthouse regulars.

Laura Wilkie had been the secretary for the Sex Crimes Unit even before I joined the staff and, fortunately for me, had stayed on as my assistant ever since. She was almost twenty years older than I – in her mid-fifties and lived alone in a small apartment on Staten Island where she devoted her off-duty hours to tending her cheerful flower garden and painting imaginary landscapes. Laura was terrifically loyal to me and responsible for keeping the work of the twenty-five lawyers who reported to me in better control and order than I ever could. When Laura came in she was pleased to see me in place and plopped the pile of daily papers in front of me, as she always did.

“Well, somebody besides me really didn’t like Isabella, did they?” she offered with a wry expression.

“Don’t say it too loud, Laura, or Chapman will add you to the suspect list. What did you have against her?”

“Oh, nothing really, Alex. She just used people like you so much, and she had no use for people like me. She wasn’t a very nice person, that’s it.”

“She wasn’t all that bad. I know she could be rude and insensitive, which was inexcusable. But she was also clever and funny and extremely talented, once you got past that artificial veneer. Anyway, let me bring you up to speed on what lies ahead today,” I went on, repeating last night’s events to Laura, who would serve as the shield between me and the outside world. On a good day, no one got past Wilkie on the phone or in person without her knowing their purpose, except for close friends. And on a bad day like this, she would be impenetrable, if that’s what I asked for.

“Mike’s in charge – anybody who shows up without an appointment gets cleared by him.” Laura nodded. She knew that Mike Chapman and I had met on one of my first cases more than ten years ago, and even though the constant macho banter was not Laura’s style, she enjoyed Mike’s friendship and knew I respected his ability as a cop.

“The D.A.”s at a budget meeting at City Hall, which should go a couple of hours,“ I went on.

“He’s going to call for me the minute he gets back, so that’s the big one I’m waiting for.

“Mercer Wallace should be on his way down with a victim. Make her comfortable in the waiting area and let me see him alone first. I want to get the story from him before I talk to her, because it’s part of the pattern, the serial rapist we’ve been looking for. I’ll take calls from any of the guys on trial – Gina may have some questions during jury selection ‘cause she’s got a tough drug issue in her case.

“And no personals, not one, not any, nobody.” In addition to the three lines on Laura’s desk, I have a private line that rings only on mine, so I knew that Jed and my closest friends could get through when they wanted to.

“Tell everybody that I’m fine and I’ll call them later.”

“What about press calls?” Laura asked, as Mike came back into my room with several case jackets under his arm.

“Hey, Wilkie, you want to lose your job? You ever know her not to take a call from a reporter? Get a grip, Laura.”

“He’s kidding, Laura. All press calls go into the Public Relations Office. Please tell Brenda I’ll give her a full update as soon as I can.” The District Attorney had a well-trained professional staff to deal with media matters, and my friend Brenda Whitney had her hands full trying to keep tabs on the hundreds of thousands of cases that passed through our office every year. She didn’t need the complications of our private lives to make her job more miserable, and it was essential to bring her in on details that were likely to surface in the press.

“Alex,” Laura questioned timidly, ‘how about people from the office? Everybody’s going to come by to check out how you’re taking this. Who do you want to see?“

“Uh,” I groaned and tried to make a mental barricade between myself and the real world. But it was impossible to ignore that there were at least three colleagues I would simply have to see during the course of the day.

Rod Squires was chief of the Trial Division, the man who supervised several hundred lawyers responsible for all the violent crime prosecutions in the office, and who reported directly to Battaglia. He was smart and personable, and at forty-five, had come up through the ranks in the office, having tried some of the toughest murder cases the city had witnessed. He had been a generous mentor to me and a great supporter of mine from my earliest days in the office.

“If Rod asks for me, I’ll go down to his office as soon as I’m done with Wallace’s case.

“And of course I’ll see Sarah.” My unit deputy was a terrific young lawyer. She was a few years younger than I, married to a former prosecutor who had just gone on to the bench, and she had returned from her first maternity leave to assist me with the operation of Sex Crimes. Sarah Brenner was petite, dark, and as attractive as she was competent.

I trusted her, I liked her, and I selected her to work with me to oversee the complex and sensitive range of cases that included sexual assault, child abuse, and domestic violence.

“In fact, tell her she’s got to review everything new that comes in. I’ll be out of commission till I know what’s happening with the murder investigation.”

Laura screwed up her courage to ask me about the third one: “Patrick McKinney?”

“Try to keep him as far away from me as you can, Laura,” I snarled.

“He’ll be the first one sniffing around here, hoping to find me miserable, and I’ll break his fat fucking neck if he says a word to me.”

Mike laughed: “Whew! Women in the workplace!”

“Listen, Mike, I don’t know what happens in parochial schools – most of the guys survive the nuns and come out with a sense of humor some a little more tasteful than yours, but humor nonetheless. This guy came out like Mother Superior himself, with a stick up his ass that should have punctured his brain by now.”

Pat McKinney was one of Rod’s deputies. He was senior to me by a couple of years, and as rigid and humorless as any man could be. I’ve never figured what made him such an angry person, but something seethed inside him and most frequently found its outlet when directed at the women professionals in the office.

“Laura thinks he blames the crab incident on me, don’t you?”

She nodded as I told Mike the story.

“Pat refused to sign off on an extradition request for one of the assistants in the Asian Gang Unit, who wanted to fly in a witness from Los Angeles and put the kid up in a hotel during the trial.

McKinney said it was too expensive and that there was a strong enough case without the witness. I told the assistant that Pat was just crabby that day, and if he wrote up a new request I would walk it in to Rod for approval.

Rod signed and the jury convicted. You know those fish stores on the corner at Canal Street?“

Our office was smack in the middle of the part of Lower Manhattan where Little Italy overlapped with Chinatown, and the south side of Canal Street was lined with Chineserun fish stores that daily displayed open crates of live fish on the sidewalks.

“Well, a few days after the trial ended, Pat arrived to find his office door unlocked. He flew to his desk to call Security to come upstairs, and when he pulled open the top drawer, about forty live crabs came rushing over the lip of the drawer onto his lap – frisky little suckers that had been packed in on top of each other all night. I’m surprised you didn’t hear his screams on Ninety-fourth Street.”

Mike liked the story.

“You do it?”

“Are you crazy? I assume it was the cops from the case, but he knows that I’m the one who called him ”crabby“ that time, so he blames me.”

We were interrupted by the appearance of a uniformed cop in the doorway beyond Laura’s desk. He looked like a rookie – baby-faced, polished shoes, new equipment, and a sheaf of arrest papers in his hand.

“I’m looking for Mr. Cooper,” he announced to the, three of us.

“You got him. Only I’m Cooper. It’s Alex Alexandra.”

“Oh, sorry. I’m Officer Corchado. They sent me up from the complaint room – I’ve got a new case.”

Laura moved to her desk to start working the phones and I waved Corchado into my office and introduced him to Mike as we seated ourselves.

“I won’t be able to write this up for you ‘cause I’m involved in something else today, but my assistant, Sarah Brenner, will work on it with you as soon as she gets in.”

“Yeah, but my lieutenant told me I had to see the bureau chief. There’s a problem with a cross-complaint and he said you’d know what to do. You’re the chief, right?”

“Yes,” I replied.

“What’s the problem? Tell me what kind of case you’ve got.”

Corchado explained that he and his partner had responded to a 911 call shortly after eleven last night.

“Neighbors had called it in housing project in the two-three.” East Harlem.

I asked if he’d met the victim.

“Yeah, she was a mess. A kid, fifteen. Taken to the rooftop from the elevator on her way home. Put up a struggle. Lots of blood, mostly from her nose, I think, when he punched her to shut her up.”

“Did he rape her?”

“Yes, ma’am. That’s what she said. She was crying so bad we didn’t talk to her a lot. Ambulance took her to the hospital.”

“How did you get the guy?” I asked.

“Easy. She knew him. Said he had gone to junior high school with her older brother. So when they took her to the hospital my partner and me went to the apartment to get her brother. We told him what happened and that his sister said that it was Otis who did it.

“Her brother, Kenny, was wild, ma’am. He knew exactly who Otis was and what apartment he lived in. Told us the guy’s real name was Herman Myers, but they called him Otis ‘cause he used to ride up and down in elevators, waiting for old ladies to get on so he could rob ’em. Just got out of jail on the robbery cases a few weeks ago. Took us right to the apartment, we knocked on the door, and when Otis came out into the hallway to talk to us, we locked him up.”

“Nice collar,” I told Corchado.

“Is it your first felony?”

“Yeah, actually it is.”

“Well, congratulations. You can feel good about this one.

Laura will send you down to Sarah’s office and you’ll have him indicted by the beginning of next week.“

“Yeah, but there is a problem. Otis… well, his lawyer called the precinct and wants to file a cross-complaint.”

“What?”

“Well, Miss Cooper, Kenny hit the defendant in the head with a baseball bat. Otis is in the hospital – took a bad crack to the head. That’s why the lieutenant told me to see you.

Do we have to lock Kenny up, too?“

“Christ, how did you let this happen?” I asked, as my pleasure over a good arrest turned to annoyance.

“Kenny followed along with us to point Otis out,” Corchado explained, ‘and I guess he was carrying the bat. He just came back from playing ball so I didn’t think nothing of it. He was real quiet until we put the cuffs on Myers, then he started to cry and all. He kept saying, “Why’d you do it to her, she’s just a baby. Man, Why’d you have to do it? She was a baby.”

“Right before we got him to the patrol car, me and my Partner on each side of him so nobody could interfere, Otis turns back to Kenny and says, ”Shit, she was no baby. Her hole was so big I almost fell into it.“

I closed my eyes at the thought of the way that must have stung poor Kenny, whoever he was.

“Miss Cooper, it was so fast I never saw it coming. Kenny just reeled back and landed the bat square on Otis’s head, and he fell to his knees like he was a sack of sugar.

“Give Kenny a medal,” mumbled Mike from his chair in the corner.

“Lucky you don’t have to worry about brain damage – it doesn’t sound like Otis’s elevator went to the top floor to begin with. When I came on the job, kid, taking a defendant to be arraigned with his head wrapped in bandages was the sign of a good cop – we didn’t have to let civilians do it for us we could whack ‘em ourselves.

Stand ’em in front of the judge with their heads wrapped in bandages. Turban jobs. ”Yeah, Your Honor, he resisted arrest, sir. Put up quite a struggle.“ Before all the ACLU crap started you could really get some street justice.”

I rolled my eyes as Mike played with the rookie.

“Ignore him, Corchado. Just go see Miss Brenner for the rape arrest.

She’ll take good care of you. As for the cross-complaint, give me the papers.“ I took the package and found the D.A.”s data sheet, the space for the write-up of the case summary. Across the top of the complaint made by Myers for assault, I scrawled in large letters: “Decline to prosecute.

Reason: Interest of justice as per Alexandra Cooper, Chief, SCPU.“

“What do I tell his lawyer, Miss Cooper?” Corchado asked.

Oh, the beauty of prosecutorial discretion.

“You tell him that Miss Cooper said that he hopes Otis’s head hurts so bad and for so long that the next time he even thinks about having an erection, it’s so painful that he thinks twice and can’t get it up.”

“Way to go, blondie,” Mike cheered as Corchado left the room.

“A chance to spend a few days with me, a couple of solid new cases, a murder to solve, and your charming good nature comes right back to the surface. Book ‘im, Corchado.”

“What’s the name of the Chilmark police chief?” Mike asked, picking up my phone to dial the call.

“Wally Flanders,” I answered.

“Why are you calling?”

“Just to see what they’re up to. Any leads, any news.”

I walked out to Laura’s desk to check on my messages.

Laura began to recite them to me: “Your mother called.

She expects to hear from you once a day until this is all resolved. She said the rabbi from your old synagogue called to see if you needed any counseling.“

“Call her back. Reassure her that I’m fine. I’m getting all my spiritual guidance from Monsignor Chapman, for the moment.”

“Nina called from L.A. Can you imagine, she was up at six forty-five to make the call?” said Laura, knowing most of my pals well enough to offer editorial comments on the messages.

“She says it’s a huge story on the Coast. Not you, of course, but Isabella. Nina says Isabella made herself so unpopular since she hit it big two years ago that everybody in Hollywood has a motive… except O.J. Simpson!”

“What else?” I asked, seeing a list of names on her pad.

“Sarah’s in. She understands the situation and will assign all the new cases. A lot of your friends have been calling – I’m just taking names and telling them to keep in touch with Joan Stafford. Diane Sawyer called and wants to know if you can do ”Prime Time“ with her this week nothing procedural, nothing about the case, just reminiscences of Isabella. I referred her to Brenda. Same for Liz Smith, she wanted a quote from you.

“And Detective Wallace is here with his witness. I’ve gotten her coffee and a newspaper and she’s in the waiting-‘ Laura was interrupted by Mike calling out to me with his hand cupped over my phone, ”Hey, Coop, you expecting some guy named Spiegel on the private line?“

“You know it’s Segal, you jerk. Can’t you be civil to him?

Now get out of here for a minute go say hello to Mercer Wallace and tell him I’ll be with him as soon as I get off the phone.“

“Oh, Jed, thank God you called,” I gushed into the receiver, unable to articulate anything that sounded less like soap opera dialogue and more like the paralyzing terror that had knotted my stomach. I was talking over his words as he was saying, “Alex? Alex? I can barely hear you,” through the crackling static of a transatlantic line.

“Do you know what happened, Jed? Are you still in Paris?

Have you heard anything about the murder? Are you going to be home soon?“

I kept spitting questions into the phone, and with the awful echoing in the bad connection I was missing the answers that Jed tried to give back.

“Yes, Alex, I know all about it. My secretary filled me in first thing this morning, and the story of the murder is even big news today in Europe. I’m worried about you though it must be awful for you.”

I don’t know why I tried so hard not to cry as I talked to him: “I need you so badly. Please come back I just want you to hold me. Please let me know when you’ll be home.”

“Of course, Alexandra, I’ll try to get back immediately. I love you, darling. I’ll call as soon as I know when I can fly out. Unfortunately, everyone on the deal came into Paris for these meetings, so it’s impossible to break away. Be strong, darling we’ll get you through this.”

I’m so sick of being strong, I complained to myself after exchanging sophomoric farewells with Jed and hanging up the phone. Being strong for victims who can’t do it themselves, being strong for weak-spirited strays of all varieties who crossed my threshold, being strong for strangers who truly did depend on the kindness of others.

When I had the opportunity to stop and think about it, I was well aware that it was a complete pain in the ass to be expected to be strong for everyone all of the time especially because no one ever wants to see me through a moment of weakness.

I’m tired of being Scarlett O’Hara. In my next life I’m going to come back as Melanie Wilkes, fragile and helpless.

I blew my nose with a tissue from the supply kept on my desk to service the victim population that passed through every day, and called out to Laura that I wanted her to send Detective Wallace into my office.

Mercer and Mike came in together a few seconds later.

“Before you get started,” Mike said, “Chief Flanders wants to know if you have any idea who Isabella was taking with her to the Vineyard.”

“No one, Mike. That was the point of it. She wanted to get off by herself for a few days and make some decisions about the scripts that had been sent to her for upcoming roles.”

“Well, Coop, I know you hate it when people lie to you, but she wasn’t alone in your cozy hideaway. At least not all the time. Looks like she had a playmate.”

“How do they know she wasn’t alone?” I asked, trying to hold my annoyance in check.

“Maybe she met some friends on the island and invited them in for a drink, or…”

Everything was getting to me today. I don’t know why it should irk me that Isabella didn’t spend her last few days on earth alone, but I assumed that I was overreacting to news of her tryst because I was so lonely at the very same moment.

“The obvious signs. Not only was Lascar sleeping in your bed, Goldilocks, but the other side of it was rumpled up pretty well, too. Coffee mugs in the sink, food in the frig.

Flanders says get this – his wife read in People magazine that Lascar was a vegetarian, but there was a big steak bone in the garbage and some hot dogs ready for a barbecue.

Right next to the yogurt.“

“Well, tell them to talk to her friends, not to me. She clearly didn’t want me to know. Now let me talk to Mercer about his case while you show the Chilmark Police how to play Dick Tracy, okay, Mike? If you need to use People to solve the case, I’ll get you a subscription.”

Mercer Wallace was one of the best detectives in the bureau. When the time finally came to beef up the Special Victims Squad he was handpicked by the commissioner to lead one of the teams. He was big, black, and very smart, with a gentle manner that endeared him to women who had been victimized, and with an equally tough attitude that signaled to defendants that this was not a man who would brook any nonsense. He was so good at working on these matters that most of the big ones were assigned to him, no matter how heavy his caseload.

“Hey, Alex, Chapman told me about the murder and whatever. Are you-‘ ”Mercer, do me a favor, let’s not even talk about it. The best thing for me is to get to work for a while, otherwise I’m out of control.“ I knew he’d understand, and so we began to talk about the pattern that had been developing on the Upper West Side. ”This here’s our man, Cooper. Fourth hit. Victim’s twenty four years old, freelance illustrator, which could be a big break for us. After you get what you need from her, I’ve got an appointment at headquarters with the artists. She’s pretty sure she can help us with a sketch. She’s really good on detail, and that’s what the guys need for a good composite.“

I told Mercer I would interview her briefly. It had not even been a full day since she had been attacked, but the same rapist was responsible for at least three other assaults in the last month based on his distinctive M.O. Mercer and I were certain of two things: he would continue to rape women, and possibly become more violent, unless we found and stopped him; and he was likely to be someone Mercer and I had met before, a recidivist, a sexual predator who repeated his acts with the same language and sexual interests he had used in the past.

He was much too accomplished and much too professional to be a first-timer, so Mercer and I were looking for the key, the little slip he might eventually make that would lead us back to him. In reality, as we looked, we were praying for a lucky break, which was the far more likely way the case would be solved.

Laura Wilkie knew that I would not take any calls while I was interviewing a rape victim, but I reminded her that she had to hold everything, as Mercer came back around the corner with Katherine Fryer and ushered her into my office.

I came out from behind my desk as Mercer made the introductions, and we sat on three chairs drawn into a small circle. It was a way to avoid the appearance of formality imposed by a desk between subject and interviewer, and it encouraged the intimacy occasioned by the topic of the conversation. I didn’t do it in every instance, but this was a case which needed that rapport established immediately.

There was no time to develop a relationship politely.

Katherine Fryer’s night had been even worse than my own, so I was struck by her composure and apparent calm.

“Do you understand why you’re here today?” I asked her.

“I’m sure Detective Wallace explained it to me, but I’m not sure I absorbed everything. Everybody’s been wonderful, but I was at the hospital for hours and I’m a bit dazed at this point.”

“I know that. I just want to explain what’s going on. My name is Alexandra Cooper, and I am the assistant district attorney who’s going to handle your case. I’ll be with you from today through the day Mercer catches your attacker and we convict him. I know he’s already asked you a lot of questions, and I’ll have to ask most of them again. But from now on we’ll be working on this together, and my job is to get you through this as comfortably as I can. Do you want to ask me anything before I begin?”

Katherine Fryer wanted the normal assurances that her name wouldn’t be in any newspapers and that her parents in Pennsylvania wouldn’t have to be told about the rape.

“And if there is a trial, will they be able to question me about my personal life, about my sexual activity?”

“No, Katherine, there have been a lot of improvements, a lot of changes in the law. In a case like this, when you’ve been attacked by a man you never saw before, nothing about your sexual history is relevant to the trial. I promise you: this stuff isn’t like all those awful made-for-TV movies.

Detective Wallace does the heavy lifting in this case the worst is behind you. Once he finds the man and you identify him, we won’t have you on the witness stand for more than an hour.

“Let me just go through the story with you one time, then you can help with the sketch and go home and get some rest.”

“I can’t go home, Miss Cooper. I’ll never feel safe there again. I’m going to my sister’s house in New Jersey. Mercer is going to go with me to the apartment to pack some clothes, but I’ll give you my sister’s number until I find a new place to live.”

This stuff really sucks. A woman alone in her home, minding her own business, is victimized there then has to move out because it’s so saturated with the memory of that devastating violation.

I asked Katherine what had happened yesterday afternoon, shortly before one o’clock, as she sat alone in her kitchen.

“Well, I was eating my lunch when the doorbell rang and I said, ”Who is it?“ and a voice outside the door said, ”It’s Con Edison.“ I said I wasn’t expecting anyone from Con Edison, that I didn’t have any problems. He told me, as I looked through the peephole, that the super had called him in because there was trouble on the gas lines in all the rear apartments. So I could see that he was, you know, dressed like a Con Ed workman and I opened the door.”

I already knew the answers to the questions I was about to ask, and I already knew how many times Katherine Fryer had blamed herself for the same things, but I had to ask them anyway.

“When you say he was dressed like a Con Ed repairman, can you tell me more about his clothing?”

“Well, it was just a flannel shirt and jeans, with a work jacket over them, and a hard hat.”

“Did the hat say ”Con Ed“ on it, specifically? Did it have any lettering on it?”

“No. It didn’t say anything.”

“Did he have any kind of identification that he showed you, like any tag on his shirt or anything he pulled out of his pocket?”

Katherine was avoiding eye contact now, admitting, with regret, that she hadn’t asked for any ID, she had just assumed he was telling the truth.

“I let him in and he walked right into the kitchen, where my lunch was on the table, and he opened the stove and looked in. And I kept talking to him as he looked, and I said I didn’t ever report a problem with my oven even though the gas had been kind of poor. It’s an old building everything needed repairs at one point or other. Then he said, ”Maybe you could get your husband to come out here and give me a hand with this.“ Katherine paused and winced as she went on, ”So I told him, “I don’t have a husband I mean, maybe I can just help you.”

That’s exactly what he wanted to hear, as Mercer and I were well aware. Home alone. “That’s when he stood up from the oven, turned around and faced me. That’s the first time I saw the knife.”

“Take a breath, Katherine,” I said, leaning over to put my hand on top of hers.

“You’re doing fine. Just take it easy I know this is difficult to do.”

“It was a long knife it had a long, narrow blade. I think he pulled it out of the tool belt he had around his waist.

It seemed like it was fifteen or sixteen inches very, very long. He grabbed me and held the knife right in front of my face. He told me not to make a sound or he would cut up my face. Then he said he’d kill me if I didn’t do what he wanted.

“So he walked me into the bedroom and told me to undress with my back toward him, to take all my clothes off and get on my knees. That’s when he made me do oral sex on him.”

When she stopped, Mercer offered her a glass of water, and as she sipped it I talked softly to her.

“You’re doing fine, Katherine. I’m going to interrupt you from time to time to ask for some details. The questions may sound stupid and trivial, but I need to ask them. You may know some of the answers, and you may not remember others. Just tell me what you can, okay?”

She nodded.

“Did he undress himself, Katherine, or did he just expose his penis?”

“He didn’t undress completely. But he did take off his jeans and the heavy belt. He kept his shirt on. And he wasn’t wearing any underpants.”

“When you say ”oral sex,“ you mean he made you put your mouth on his penis?”

“Yes, yes, he did. He kept saying he’d kill me if I didn’t.

Then he told me to stop. He picked me up, he lifted me up, and he put me on my bed. He pushed me down on the bed face up and he put a pillow over my face.“

“Was he talking during any of this, Katherine, or was he not saying anything at all?”

“Yes, he talked. He talked a lot of the time. But, but… I really can’t remember too much of what he said. It was disgusting.”

I leaned in to try to get her to look me in the eye. There aren’t many honest people who can lie when they look you right in the eye just the pathological types. I knew Katherine Fryer could tell me exactly what her assailant said to her if I forced her through it.

“Katherine, you can remember the things he said to you you may not want to, but I know you haven’t forgotten them. And as unpleasant as it is, and as much as it may make you mad at me, I want you to say every one of them to me. They’re part of his signature, Katherine; they’re part of what will help Mercer find him, because he’s probably said them to someone else and he’ll say them again the next time. And there will be a next time unless we stop him. It’s what helps him get off on this stuff, so it’s one of the ways you can get back at him. Please help us with this, trust us.”

“Do you want me to leave the room, Katherine?” Mercer asked, hoping it might make her more comfortable.

“No, no it’s not you. It’s just, well, it makes me nauseous to think about. I’m not a prude or anything, but…”

Again, Katherine Fryer braced herself and went on with her story.

“It was odd,” she continued, ‘because he kept going back and forth between the sexual stuff and asking me where my money was. When I undressed, he told me I had big breasts he told me he liked that. Then he went right on saying he wanted my money and my credit cards. I pointed to my pocketbook. Once he had me on the bed with the pillow on my face, that’s when he really talked a lot.

“He wanted to know if his prick excuse me, that’s his words I’m using now if his prick was bigger than my boyfriend’s… Was it better for me?… Why did I have such big breasts and a little pussy?… Then, in the middle of that, how much money was in my wallet? Then, right back to how good my boyfriend was in bed. And then he kept saying that he would kill me if I didn’t make him come.”

Mercer caught my eye as Katherine rested her forehead in her hand. We had more than enough to know it was the same guy as in the earlier cases. He was trying to tell me to wrap it up so he could take her on to headquarters.

Even the ending was identical. After the rape and robbery, he bound Katherine to the bed with an extension cord, stuffed a dishcloth in her mouth, and replaced the pillow over her head. He ripped the telephone cord out of the wall, and she heard him rummage around in her dresser drawers before the final sound of the front door as it shut behind him. It took more than one hour for the determined young woman to free herself from the cord he had wrapped around her wrists and summon help from a neighbor.

I was glad Mercer had signaled me to cut the interview short. Katherine Fryer was running on empty, and I had found an outlet for my own predicament in trying to lose myself in her case.

“Okay, Katherine, we’ve given Miss Cooper enough to keep her busy for a while. Let’s get some fresh air and walk over to headquarters. We’ll let you stop talking and start sketching.” Mercer Wallace stood up and opened the office door, determined not to let me wear out his witness.

‘I’ll call you later, Coop see if we can figure out where to go from here.“

I thanked Katherine and explained that I would be available to her for any kind of help she needed.

“Keep a pad next to your bed,” I urged her.

“More detail will come back to you. Like it or not, you’ll have flashbacks triggered by conversations you hear or reminders you see on the news or TV shows. Write down anything else you remember, no matter how insignificant it seems to you, ‘cause Mercer and I will want to know it.”

We exchanged good-byes and the two of them walked around the corner to the elevator bank. As soon as they were out of view, Laura blurted out, “Battaglia called from his car. He’s on his way back to the building and he wants you waiting for him in his office when he gets there.”

“Great. If I’m not back in an hour, send reinforcements.”

The walls lining the corridor into the executive wing of the office were covered with portraits of a century’s worth of New York County District Attorneys. Grim-vis aged no-nonsense men, most of whom had held office without ever being troubled by the presence of women lawyers on their staffs. I walked the gauntlet below their icy stares as I headed in to face Battaglia, sure that they would come alive to talk behind my back about the terrible scandal I had visited upon their successor.

I reached the desk of the D.A.“s executive assistant, Rose Malone, a great-looking woman in her late forties, who had started in the office secretarial pool as a high school graduate but had been hand-selected by Battaglia to run the front office and had done so for almost twenty years.

She and I had spent long hours together throughout my tenure in the office, and we were good friends. Rose was the best gauge of the boss’s moods, and a great ally on the occasions when I needed one.

“You might want to save that request until tomorrow,” she would say, on a day the D.A. had been criticized on a particular case action by the Times editorial page; or, “Go right in, Alex he was so pleased with the verdict your team had on that gang rape.”

“Good morning, Alexandra,” Rose said, courteously this time. Cool, it seemed to me.

“That’s terrible, what happened to Miss Lascar. Are you doing okay?” she went on.

Once I assured her that I was fine, she told me to go right into Battaglia’s office, and went back to her word processor. No chatter, no gossip, no mood summary, no advice. If Rose was cool, then the District Attorney would be frigid.

I braced for the lecture I was about to receive and opened the door. Battaglia was standing behind his enormous desk, barking into the phone as he motioned me to sit at the large conference table at the far end of the room. I pretended to make notes on my legal pad while I tried to figure who the conversation involved, and was a bit relieved to see that this burst of anger was directed at the federal prosecutor in our district, with whom the D.A. was feuding over jurisdiction in a major mob investigation.

He hung up the phone and slowly walked over to sit across the table from me.

“What the hell is going on here, Alex do you have any idea?” Battaglia spoke quietly, as he began his interrogation.

“Paul, I…”

“Do you know how this kind of notoriety distracts from the serious business of this office? Do you understand how it compromises your ability to get work done?”

As my color deepened and my embarrassment grew, so the D.A.“s voice escalated. There was no point in my responding to any of his questions because he already knew the answers to those he was asking. I was familiar with his technique, and knew that in a few moments he would stop yelling and begin to press for details. The booming jabs didn’t bother me half as much as the next phase, when he could make you feel like a complete idiot if you were unable to provide him with the details he wanted. I had watched unsuspecting colleagues present him with information for an impending press conference, confident in their mastery of the facts of the case, to have him come back with questions like, ”Do you know what church the suspect’s mother attends?“ or, ”Which junior high school did the witness go to?“ or some other point that was of potential value to a politician and none to a junior prosecutor.

Battaglia talked at me for quite a period of time before he began to ask for facts that he didn’t yet know. And then it was time to give him every shred of detail from the moment Isabella first was introduced to me and spent time in our office through our most recent correspondence and her request to escape to a private hideaway.

The District Attorney waited for my presentation to conclude before he leaned in, eyeballed me, and asked:

“Can you think of any aspect of this, any hint of scandal, that’s going to come back to hurt this office, Alexandra?”

The unspoken portion of that sentence, I knew, was…

“Because if there is, Alex, you’d better start cleaning out your desk drawer and thinking about the advantages of the private practice of law.”

“No, Paul,” I said, shaking my head repeatedly, “I’ve been thinking about it all of last night and this morning. There’s nothing more that I haven’t told you, really.”

He sat back upright in his chair and reflected for several seconds before his mien began to soften and he took on the aspect of the Paul Battaglia I idolized.

“Okay, Alex, how do you come out in all this? What are we going to do about you?”

“I’m practically numb today, Paul. I think it’s actually good for me to be at work because it gets my mind-‘ ”Good for you, maybe, but I don’t know how good it is for the office. Patrick McKinney thinks I ought to put you on leave for a few months and wait till this all clears up.“

“Oh, Paul, that’s ridiculous. What he really thinks is that I should throw my body on top of Lascar’s coffin and be burned alive. Of course Pat wants me to take a leave he can’t bear having me around in the first place.”

“Well, I spoke to the District Attorney up there in Massachusetts this morning the one in charge of the murder investigation. He and the police chief would like you to fly up for a few hours tomorrow. They need a lot of background from you, and they have to go through your house so you can tell them what things are yours and what were Isabella’s… and what belonged to the mystery guest.

“So make your arrangements and, let’s see, tomorrow is Friday I want you to go up and give them whatever they need. And your detective goes with you, understand?

Who’ve you got?“

“Mike Chapman, Manhattan North.”

“Fine. Just keep in touch with me every step of the way.

I think you know that I don’t like surprises, Alex.“

“Yes, sir.”

“Two other points. You are not to go to Lascar’s funeral. No Hollywood, no photo-ops, no way for the press to keep tying this back in to us. She’s dead say your farewells privately. Understood?”

I nodded in agreement.

“And the other thing. You are not a cop, Alex. As I’ve told you before, you could have gone to the Police Academy and saved your old man a lot of money. You are an assistant district attorney, an officer of the court, a lawyer. Let the boys and girls in blue play police officers and keep your nose out of it.”

I nodded again.

“Oh, I meant to ask you, do you have any idea who was paying her a visit up there?”

“No, I don’t, Paul. She never mentioned it and I never asked.”

“Well, when did she get to the Vineyard?”

Whoops, I could feel it coming. I had a rough idea of the answer, but not an exact time. Two “I don’t knows’ in a row. Bad form with Paul Battaglia.

“How seriously should we be looking for this second stalker?”

I was about to make the third strike.

“Paul, I just don’t know the answer to that we’re trying to evaluate it now.”

“All right, Alex, be sure and let me know whenever you get some answers. Take care of yourself, that’s the most important thing right now. Oh is there any progress on that serial rapist, Upper West Side? I’m getting a lot of crap from that local community board can’t your guys wrap this one up?”

Yeah, and if I have a free hour this afternoon I’m going to go out looking for Judge Crater, too, I thought, as I told the District Attorney, “We’re trying, boss.”

Mike Chapman was sitting at my desk eating one of the sandwiches that Laura had ordered in for lunch when I returned from Battaglia’s office.

“How bad did it hurt?” he asked as I walked in, picking up the growing pile of messages from Laura’s desk.

“Not too bad,” I replied.

“The mayor must have given him the money he wanted. He’s clearly annoyed, but not wild. Have you heard about the plans for tomorrow?”

“Nope. What’s up?”

“I’m taking you to Martha’s Vineyard show you how a real police investigation gets done,” I said, chuckling at the thought of Mike meeting the town police. A few house burglaries when the summer people leave after Labor Day, loads of moped accidents in season, and endless cases of Driving Under the Influence all winter long, but I couldn’t remember a murder that had occurred on the Vineyard in my lifetime.

“Whoa, an overseas trip, and with the Cooperwoman! You know, I think Patrick McKinney is right. This whole thing with Lascar is just a ruse for you to get a weekend alone with me on an island, so we can…”

“Detective Chapman, if you don’t control yourself I’m going to leave you behind with that needle-nosed prick.

It’s not a weekend, it’s a day trip. I’ll have Laura make the plane reservations. It’ll save a lot of time if you leave your gun home we won’t have to deal with all that security stuff at the airport.

“And, Mike,” I added, “Battaglia asked me a question which raised an obvious point. Exactly when did Isabella get to the Vineyard? I’ve got an idea maybe Chief Flanders has thought of it-‘ ”Unlikely, unless his wife supplied it to him. He didn’t sound like he was into ideas,“ Chapman replied.

“Well, there are only two ways to get there. I mean, you’re right, we are going overseas. It’s not like most places in the country where a killer could just drive to a murder scene and then just drive away. You can only get to the Vineyard by sea and by air.”

“Yeah, Alex, but thousands of people still do it every year, don’t they? And they don’t need passports.”

I knew that the Vineyard had a small year-round population of about fifteen thousand, which swelled to almost eighty thousand in the summer vacation months of June, July, and August. Then, after Labor Day, the crowds departed and the little island regained its tranquillity, much to the delight of the locals.

“It becomes much more difficult to get to the island after the Labor Day weekend,” I explained to Mike.

“For example, all summer long, there are direct flights to Martha’s Vineyard from New York. Lots of flights, several times a day, from both La Guardia and Newark airports.

This time of year they’ve been eliminated. From now until next June, there’s only one scheduled airline that flies from Boston nine-seater planes, a few times a day and small private or chartered planes.

“Same with the ferry. The ferry goes from Woods Hole, on Cape Cod, to the Vineyard, but fewer times a day after the holiday weekend is over.”

“Where are we going with this travelogue, Coop?” Mike asked.

“You know what we’re looking for,” I responded to Mike.

“Who was with Isabella on the island, and was that guy or woman the one who killed her. Or maybe he witnessed the killing and fled, but knows who did it.”

“All right, do you know when she went up to your house?” It wouldn’t take much to draw Chapman into an investigation, I knew that from years of experience.

“She told me she was going at the end of last week, when she finished some business in Boston, probably Thursday or Friday. I assume Chief Flanders has already contacted the Ritz and knows when she checked out,” I offered.

“And she told me that if she had enough time, instead of flying, she was going to try to have a driver, a limo, take her down to Woods Hole it’s only ninety minutes by car from Boston and she wanted to arrive the ”old-fashioned“ way, by sailing across to the island.”

“Yeah,” laughed Mike.

“Just like the Pilgrims the limo, to the ferry, to the rented Mustang, to the chintz-lined cottage. The rental agency people should be able to tell us when Isabella picked up the car. Then, the next thing I do, if Flanders hasn’t, is to check the passenger manifests for the airline, starting at least a week ago. What’s it called?”

“Cape Air. Exactly. And there’s a tiny office at the airport for private planes, which all have to register and submit flight plans in order to come and go. The air arrival and departure part of this won’t take much time at all. The local police will know most of the names of islanders and regular commuters, you’ll have a few honeymooners and golf outings for the weekends, and then Isabella’s manager can look at the unknowns for familiar names that he might recognize, but which wouldn’t mean anything to us, right?”

I suggested to Mike.

“That covers the air, Sherlock,” Mike replied.

“But what about the water? Does the ferry take cars onto it, as well as foot passengers?”

“Yes, it does. Look, the big problem is boats. There are lots of marinas and plenty of little coves. A private boat could come from the Cape or the Hamptons, drop anchor, discharge and pick up a killer with no way to trace it.

That’s how most of the drugs get to an island, as you know. Anyway, you could even walk onto the ferry with a shotgun inside a Vuitton tote there’s no such thing as metal detectors on the boats.“ I was getting a second wind by this point, suddenly thinking that I knew of a way, even though a long shot, of tracking Isabella’s arrival.

“But, Mike, if she came by ferry, and she wasn’t alone, there’s another possibility,” I suggested.

“On a beautiful fall afternoon, most people who travel on the ferries head topside. There are hundreds of seats, a snack bar binoculars to scan the horizon the views of the Vineyard, crossing the sound from the Cape, are absolutely spectacular. Isabella Lascar would have been just like every other tourist on that boat, and whether it’s a first trip or the thousandth, I don’t know anyone who isn’t captivated by the beauty of that vista.”

“I’m afraid to ask what’s next. You’re gonna Want us to find and canvas everybody who was on the boat to see if they saw a movie star standing next to them and whether they can describe the person with-‘ ”No, much easier. Every single tourist and half of the regulars, make that trip with a camera, Mike,“ I said.

“People are always taking pictures of each other against the boat railing, like it was the QE2, or feeding the seagulls or just staring at the view.”

“You think people recognized Isabella and took her picture?” Mike asked.

“Hard to tell. I had seen her when she wasn’t preening for her public. We had gone all over Manhattan together and people failed to recognize her when she was casually dressed, without makeup and a serious hairdo.

“I mean, she looked absolutely beautiful whether or not she tried to hide it. She’d turn heads, even if people didn’t know exactly who she was.”

“So, how does that help?”

“Two possibilities. One is that someone did take her picture, recognizing Isabella Lascar, the movie star. The other,” I thought out loud, ‘is that she simply was captured in the frame of some photographs you know, people taking amateur shots of the scenery usually have bodies in the foreground, whether they intend to or not. Even if Isabella was trying to be incognito, she may be in somebody’s snapshots along with her weekend guest.“

“Which might give us a key witness,” said Mike, ‘and a motive, and maybe even a perp.“

”Call the chief. While you work the airlines, have him do this angle. There’s only one radio station on the island. WMVY great oldies, lots of Carly Simon and James Taylor, and all the local news, so everybody listens to it at some point. Do a public service announcement, immediately.

Urge anyone with film from the ferry at the end of last Week, with pictures of Isabella, to come forward, and if it leads to any information about the identification of her killer… then we get the police to offer a reward. There’s a shot at coming up with something. I’d even check the camera store near the ferry landing they do developing in several hours, and probably have the names and numbers of everyone who has brought film in to be developed during the past week.“

‘I’ll make a deal with you, Alex,“ Mike offered, as he threw out the remains of his sandwich and pushed away from my desk.

”You take care of these weenie-waggers here in Manhattan, and I’ll work with your Chilmark boys on the murder. This isn’t a bad way to begin. I’ll get started on it in your paralegals’ office and you keep occupied on your own cases.“

I sorted through the phone messages that had accumulated and gave most of them back to Laura, knowing they could wait till the next week. I kept the ones I wanted to handle.

Jed’s secretary had called. No way for him to leave Paris until the business meetings end on the weekend he’ll call me at home later and come straight from the airport on Saturday. Shit, I thought, not exactly the response I had craved. But I knew my own priorities when I was in the middle of a major investigation which had to come before any personal considerations, so I understood Jed’s position -1 guess.

Call Congressman LaMella’s office. They want to know our position on the legislative package changing the evidentiary requirement for child abuse cases. Better late than never. Gina Hemmings will call back from Part 82, where she’s on trial. The judge is about to charge her jury and she wants to know if you can cite any cases on whether the crime of ‘sexual misconduct’ is a lesser included count in a rape case. Well, I mused as my annoyance grew, once again Gina has avoided the burden of over preparation.

Ellen Goldman called to confirm tomorrow’s appointment. Battaglia had given her permission to do a big story on the innovative work of our Sex Crimes Prosecution Unit for the USA Lawyer’s Digest, the premier glossy legal journal. I had already spoken with her several times on the telephone and we were ready for the first interview.

She’s smart and pushy, but I’d have to move her back to next week. I knew she’d try to weasel Isabella’s death into the piece so I decided to call her back myself in an effort to show I was still in control. Slightly. I got her machine and left a message kicking our appointment back until Monday afternoon.

Sarah Brenner will wait for callback. Has a witness coming on Monday and doesn’t believe the story. Wants help breaking it down. Boy, am I in the mood to do that – I’d love to make someone else cry. Schedule that one for Monday morning.

Pat McKinney called to see if there’s anything he can do to help. Translation: he knows I’m miserable and the boss is pissed off, and he wants me to know that he knows.

Response: yeah, you can help me go fuck yourself.